


smile, what's the use of crying? (you'll find that life is still worthwhile)

by lettersfromnowhere



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, IW SPOILERS, Post-Avengers 4, Starmora Week, Starmora Week 2018, Unironically deep conversations about vines, cheesy as heck, day 6: future, slice of life kinda?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-06-27 05:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15679416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: "Maybe, she thinks, it’s because of their shared optimism in the wake of the events that have so altered their worlds that they make such suitable companions."Or: Scott Lang and Peter Quill find that they've got a lot in common.





	smile, what's the use of crying? (you'll find that life is still worthwhile)

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what prompted this, but I would like to extend my wholehearted thanks to @Zivit for letting me bounce my ideas off of her. This wouldn't have been the same story without your advice, so thank you! I'm having quite a bit of fun with this inter-MCU character crossover thing (see also: starmora/scarletvision oneshot), and Scott and Peter have very similar personalities, so this sort of just...happened. An incoherent mess, but I like those sometimes. Please enjoy! 
> 
> Title is from "Smile" by Nat King Cole.

“So…you wear a suit that makes you get really tiny?” Peter asks with a quizzical, faintly amused expression.

 

“That’d be me,” Scott sighs. “And you do…what, again?”

 

“I used to be part-god,” Peter replies, his former animation subtly flickering away. “Now I’m…a team captain, I guess.” He smiles wryly. “But a good one. A _really_ good one.”

 

“Your girlfriend and the raccoon…thing…apparently think otherwise,” Scott chuckles, staring at the ground below the step they sit on.

 

“Yeah, Rocket’s got a complex,” Peter says, “and Gamora…eh, she’ll call me out, but she knows she loves me.”

 

“Are you sure we’re not dating the same person?” Scott asks, trying not to laugh at what was clearly intended as a serious remark. “She sounds _just_ like Hope.”

 

“Yup. And they both died, too!” Peter helpfully points out bitterly, realizing his faux pas only after Scott shoots him a glare that could cut through titanium.

 

“…sorry,” he mutters perfunctorily. “Wasn’t thinking.”

 

“Another similarity between the two of you,” says a warm but weary voice from the doorway, followed by a mumbled “I don’t even want to know what they were talking about.” Hope observes the two – they took no time to realize that, in spite of everything they’d seen and experienced, they got on famously – with exhausted fondness for a moment. They’re very much alike in both the best and the worst ways. Both are as upbeat as they come, quick to joke and effortlessly hopeful.

 

Maybe, she thinks, it’s because of their shared optimism in the wake of the events that have so altered their worlds that they make such suitable companions. Neither of them, at a time when not many of their cohorts feel as if life will ever go back to normal, seem to have any trouble laughing things off, accepting their new realities and making the best of them. Hope can’t help but smile at that in spite of herself. Scott may be as immature, impulsive, and lacking in judgment as they come, but there is a reason she loves him.

 

“Didn’t you say you had a daughter?” Peter recalls, breaking the (brief) silence. “How’s she taking all of this…world-almost-ending stuff?”

 

“Like a champ,” Scott replies, his tone proud and worried and so full of affection you could nearly touch it all in one. “I wish I could have been there the whole time, but…”

 

“To explain what was happening?” Peter guesses.

 

Scott nods, somewhat surprised at Peter’s sudden perceptiveness. “Yeah, that exactly. She’s wise beyond her years, but she’s just a kid. I would rather have explained what was going on myself, you know?”

 

“I mean, I don’t have kids or anything, but I kinda feel ya.” Peter stubs at the ground with the toe of his boot. “Good that she’s not traumatized or anything. I would be. I _was,_ actually.”

 

“You witnessed a potentially world-ending event as a child?” Scott asks half-jokingly.

 

“Nah. Mom died,” Peter says, considerably more subdued. “I had no idea what was going on half the time and it messed with my head. Then I got abducted by aliens, so you can just imagine.”

 

“Dude.” Scott’s eyes widen. “ _Have You Seen Me?_ did an episode on this kid who disappeared in Missouri after his mother died and was never found! Is that-“

 

“I have no idea what _Have You Seen Me?_ is, but yeah, that’d probably be me,” Peter responds, suddenly mirthful again and quite pleased to have been the subject of…whatever that was. The idea of conspiracy theorists speculating about what’d become of that poor kid in Missouri amused him, as much as it revolved around memories he didn’t want to relive, now less than ever.

 

“Show about missing person cases. That is so cool, man…”

 

“Oh, the missing person show? Peter already showed me that. It’s completely ridiculous.”

 

“No I didn’t,” Peter protests, narrowing his eyes as he turns to Gamora, standing in the doorway with hands on her hips. She looks more at ease than she has in weeks and he could collapse with relief at that alone, even if she does appear to have some sort of memory alteration. A nagging voice in the back of Peter’s mind warns him that she’s going to have trouble sleeping tonight with the weight of everything she isn’t letting herself think about, but he ignores it; for the moment, she’s whole again.

  
(He’s never even _heard_ of that thing! What could he possibly have shown her?)

 

“Oh, right. Other Peter. The smaller, exponentially less irritating one,” Gamora teases.

 

“You seem…content,” Peter comments with an anticipatory smile.

 

“A little. Smaller, less irritating Peter decided he needed to cheer me up with these short videos of people yelling at each other and dropping bread and things like that,” Gamora explains. “None of them were all that funny, but he was so enthusiastic about it – he knows all of the words to them, for some reason – that I couldn’t help but enjoy it a _little_ bit.”  

 

“Oh, Vines?” Scott nods in recognition. “Cassie likes those. I don’t get it either, but hey, if a video of a guy throwing, or, I guess, _yeeting,_ an empty soda bottle across the room makes her laugh, I’m not gonna say no.”

 

“We need stuff like that right now,” Peter agrees. “Even though, full disclosure, I have absolutely no idea what anything you just said actually means.”

 

“Imagine that,” Scott laughs bitterly. “Half the world gets ashed and we’re still all obsessed with Vines.”

 

“We need a distraction, I guess,” Peter conjectures. “My mom liked to say that other than dancing, laughter was the best cure for pretty much anything. I take it these things are supposed to be funny, right?”

 

“Laughter is the best medicine, that kinda thing?” Scott nods. “Makes sense. What better way to get our minds off of it all?”

 

“Using jokes to conceal my deep-seated psychological issues is my _stuff,_ man,” Peter agrees. “It’s better than moping around like the future is already gone.”

 

Gamora rolls her eyes – _of course he’d say that –_ but she can’t help thinking that there is, however unconventional, some wisdom in the idea. The world hasn’t stopped just because it’s changed; they have to go on. And Peter’s ability to do that with a smile, finding that spark of hope or humor or pleasantness, tiny as it may be, in even the bleakest situation, is perhaps his greatest asset, one she’s loath to admit she deeply admires. Perhaps she isn’t ready to face what’s happened yet, but she’ll have to let it slip from its prison deep in the recess of her mind one day. And when she does, she thinks with numb optimism, she can tryto see the light in the future that lies ahead.

 

Because what Peter’s caught onto is deceptively simple: none of them were guaranteed a future even a matter of days ago, and the one they have now is a gift best faced with sincere hope that it can be made whatever it could never be before.  


End file.
